powered by FreeFind

 



The Madwoman of Central Park West

Cover to Original Broadway Cast Recording

An Original Musical Comedy in 2 acts. (A semi-autobiographical one-woman play about surviving as a woman/wife/mother). Book by Phyllis Newman and Arthur Laurents. Music by Peter Allen, Leonard Bernstein, Jerry Bock, et al

22 Steps Theatre, New York City - 13 June, 1979 - (86 performances )

Synopsis

ACT 1

This is about a woman who's trying to clean up her bedroom, and get out of it. The lights come up on a very messy bedroom dominated by an even messier bed. A woman roughly thirty or forty crawls out from under the bed with a barbell in her hand, finds a second and does a couple of deeply perfunctory exercises. She tosses them aside … stares catatonically for a moment, shakes herself out of it, plants a smile on her face and sings: "Up! Up! Up!"

She is in the middle of making yet another of her endless lists, when her thirteen year old daughter barges in wearing pounds of her Mother's makeup badly applied …The kid accuses her of destroying her life because she's not a normal mother. They exchange zingers, the kid storms out yelling "Mommie Dearest" and she slams the door. The woman goes back to her list and writes, "Do not be deeply affected by your child . . . remember you were one" . . . she says to herself "But it wasn't supposed to be like this ... " She sings: "My Mother Was A Fortune Teller."

She looks for answers by going to a "hot" seventies self-help seminar ... there, along with a couple of hundred other people in a hotel ballroom, she is abused into … "Sharing" … She sings: "The Cheerleader."

Strengthened with new temporary resolve she devises a "With-It" high concept country western punk act which she is trying out in a Greenwich Village club ... "the Bitter Pits" ... she sings a song about her father and a hypnotizing cat … one of his crazy schemes … she is losing her audience … she stops her act and "Gets Real" … she tells them about loyalty and their long marriage … She sings what her Mother always used to say about her Daddy: "What Makes Me Love Him?"

Back in her bedroom … we find out how she met her husband. We're back in the late fifties, at Sardi's where she's having her first nervous date with him … it's not going too well … she's afraid she's losing him completely so she tells him: "Don't Laugh."

We're back in the present … and the woman is trying out yet another act, this time a "commercial" one. She and her choreographer are working in a rehearsal hall. She sings: "The Woman's Medley."

ACT TWO

"Up! Up! Up!," Reprise. Once again she's buoyed herself up to make it all work ... the phone rings … it's her agent with an offer for a very tacky job … her daughter comes in, overhears it and hits her again with the "Humiliating Mother Routine". The woman goes back in time to other humiliations and triumphs … like the night she won a Tony Award against all odds. She sings: "Better."

She attempts an affair with her son's grade school teacher. She fouls herself up by talking too much and too hysterically. The scene changes dramatically and theatrically to a highly stylized appearance she's doing on the Johnny Carson Show where she tells the sad story of this year's slipped disco queen, Lola, in: "Copacabana."

Back in her room, she's feeling better because she has exorcised so many feelings … she starts making a list of her assets … her three kids … her husband is the oldest. She says maybe if she could just make peace with them and simply say to them "My New Friends" then she makes her final list: "The Song of Lists."

"My Mother Was A Fortune Teller," Reprise.

Musical Numbers

  1. Up! Up! Up!
  2. My Mother Was a Fortune Teller
  3. Cheerleader
  4. What Makes Me Love HIm?
  5. Don't Laugh
  6. Women's Medley
  7. Up! Up! Up! - Reprise
  8. Better
  9. Copacabana
  10. My New Friends
  11. A Song of Lists
  12. Fortune Teller - Reprise